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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Jonathan Edwards 



Jonathan Edwards 



ISAAC CROOK, LL. D. 






Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye 
New York: Eaton and Mains 



Copyright, 1903, 

by 1 J) 

Jennings and Pye 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

SEP 4 1903 

Copyright Entry 

ituf.tt. Hf t l 

CUSS A- XXc No 
copy b. 



BIOGRAPHY IS THE SOUL OF HISTORY 



" People who attend bonfires may get their beards 
scorched. ' ' — Carlyle. 

He meant biography. Alas, for his own beard at 
Froude' s bonfire ! 

Small privacies there are in the greatest and purest 
lives, which, dragged into the sight of the world, discolor 
character and belittle humanity. No man should be so 
treated. Edwards shall not. 



INTRODUCTION 

HOW CAME THIS BOOK 

Whether good or not, it came as many 
of the best do come. Bunyan got hold of 
a thread, and as he pulled it came. The re- 
sult was an imperishable story. 

Dr. Stalker's charming "Imago Christi" 
came without purpose beforehand. Dr. 
Luther T. Townsend told the writer he had 
never written a book on determining to do 
so. Those then under discussion were 
"Creeds," "Lost Forever/' and other such 
living books. Recently my congregation 
was powerfully re-enforced by that of a 
brother Presbyterian pastor. I had been 
giving an occasional character lecture on 
some saint or apostle of the modern Church. 
The presence of this audience made up of 
7 



8 Introduction 

the descendants of Calvin and Arminius 
brought out Jonathan Edwards. The ad- 
dress was called for soon by several Presby- 
terian congregations, then by Methodist 
bodies. After that a publisher whose wis- 
dom and foresightedness have challenged 
my confidence said, " Prepare us a little 
volume on Jonathan Edwards." Here it 
is. It contains nothing unsavory to make 
it popular. We trust the book may not be 
lonesome because its subject was both good 
and great. 



AIM 

This is a short account of a great life 
which fell mostly within the first half of the 
eighteenth century. 

Thousands of years ago a man whose 
generation consisted of only four persons, 
performed his duty and it is written of him, 
"He being dead, yet speaketh! y 

This is true of a few persons all along 
through the centuries. 

Jonathan Edwards may seem a man of 
yesterday, but both in life and character, 
is a man of to-day and all the to-morrows. 



THE name, Jonathan Edwards, is eu- 
phonious, but it suggests to most peo- 
ple a metaphysician difficult to understand, 
hard to answer, often absurd, whose gloomy 
system of thought is past, and whose life lies 
remote from ours. 

To many others the name stands associ- 
ated chiefly with that awful sermon "The 
sinner in the hands of an angry God." This 
is his worst side. We doubt if it is against 
him. 

Grandfathers look tall and venerable to 
their young posterity unless the vision of 
those descendants be blinded by conceit. 

There is more than veneration for ances- 
tors in the persistent hold of Edwards on 
modern attention. 

Perspective is a test of mountains and 
men. When Shasta or Orizaba lift above 
ii 



12 Jonathan Edwards 

their ranges on the horizon and seem to 
pursue the receding traveler, he knows 
they are greater than their fellows. 

So men of the stature of Edwards rise 
above the horizon of years. There may 
have been born to America his equal, but 
who? 

Washington was stately and grand in his 
sphere; Alexander Hamilton was greater 
in some qualities than Washington, though 
infinitely below him in morals. Jefferson 
was his superior in certain great qualities. 
Franklin was cunning and far-seeing in 
statecraft as well as thrifty in economics. 
Lincoln was unmatched in the way he filled 
his place as martyr and savior of the repub- 
lic. In letters, Hawthorne is king. In ora- 
tory, Webster. In war, Grant. In juris- 
prudence, John Marshall. In theology, was 
it Hodge? These men stand taller than 
most. There may have been others equal, 
had occasion required. But Edwards looms 
aloft in his place during colonial times just 
preceding the Revolution, and as time passes 
he rises on the horizon. 



Jonathan Edwards 13 

FAMILY 

He came of fine ancestry. On the pa- 
ternal side, Timothy Edwards, his father, 
was a graduate of Harvard, who took two 
degrees the same day for superior scholar- 
ship. He was sixty years pastor at East 
Windsor, Conn. 

The grandfather was Richard Edwards, 
a prosperous, pious merchant in Hartford, 
Conn. The great-grandfather, William Ed- 
wards, came to America in 1640 and was 
many years a reputable trader also in Hart- 
ford. That thrifty city is greatly debtor to 
the family of Edwards. Earlier in the line 
was a poet belonging to the court of Queen 
Elizabeth. Some of his poetry is yet pre- 
served. The family descended from him. 
His ancestors are traced back to Wales. 
This strain of Cambrain blood will in part 
account for the combination of poetic im- 
agination, rugged will power, and lofty re- 
ligiousness of Jonathan Edwards. 

The mother, Esther Stoddard, imparted to 
him possibly more of his talent than did his 



14 Jonathan Edwards 

father, great as that was. It were trite to 
repeat how often that occurs. She was the 
daughter of Rev. Dr. Stoddard, one of the 
most influential and dominating ministers 
in Western New England in his day. He 
retained his pastorate in Northampton for 
thirty-six years. 

She was tall, dignified, commanding in 
appearance ; affable and gentle in her man- 
ners, and was regarded as surpassing her 
husband in mental vigor. She possessed re- 
markable judgment and prudence. She had 
extensive information and thorough knowl- 
edge of the Scriptures and theology ; was 
singularly conscientious and pious, pos- 
sessed an amount of intellectual independ- 
ence which no precedent or prestige could 
intimidate. These qualities reappear in her 
fifth child and only son. 

POSTERITY 

Jonathan Edwards not only came of a 
great family, but founded one. His choice 
of a wife was made wisely and unawares 
during his college years at Yale. What 



Jonathan Edwards 15 

fine affinities have been formed under such 
conditions. 

Happy he who wins a diploma, a wife, 
and finds a Savior in college days. Ed- 
wards found the first two, having already 
acquired the third, and grew in knowledge 
of Christ. 

Like many thoughtful young men of his 
times, he kept a journal. Introspection 
may be overdone, but is oftener underdone. 
Of this quality his journal was full. It 
was also sentimental. So should youth and 
its record be. 

There is a passage in his journal descrip- 
tive of her who afterwards became his wife. 
This sly tribute to her character challenged 
the admiration of Chalmers for its elegance 
and purity. She was then but thirteen and 
he twenty years of age. It is quite ethereal 
and heavenly-minded. Such is often the 
case with youthful piety and sentimentality. 
It is none the worse of that. "She has a 
strange sweetness in her mind, a singular 
purity in her affections. You could not 
persuade her to do anything wrong or sin- 



1 6 Jonathan Edwards 

ful if you would give her all the world, lest 
she should offend that great Being." And 
much more of the same sort. 

When Edwards was settled at Northamp- 
ton as assistant to his grandfather, he was 
about twenty-four years of age. Immedi- 
ately he sought in marriage the hand of her 
whom he had thus described. It was so 
insistent on his part and so willing on hers 
that he obtained that great gift of the Lord, 
a good helpmeet. 

Her ancestry was distinguished in colo- 
nial annals and also before that in England. 
She was descended on the mother's side 
from the Rev. Thomas Hooker. Her own 
father, Thomas Pierpont, an eminent di- 
vine, was once professor of moral philos- 
ophy in Yale. 

She was endowed with rare beauty of 
form and feature, which was retained 
through all her mature life. There was a 
mystical tendency in her piety. She found a 
shorter way to the joy of religion than did 
her husband. She was gifted with rare tact 
and talent, which was shown in the train- 



Jonathan Edwards 17 

ing of her family, her economical manage- 
ment, and in the administration of the min- 
isterial manse, requiring a skill as marked 
as that which leads an army or organizes 
great commercial combinations. 

In the days of stress and trial that came 
upon the household afterwards, she proved 
far better than the wife of the patriarch Job, 
whom we may suppose to have been ab- 
sorbed in the comforts of wealth and pros- 
perity, just as many women of affluence and 
fashion now are. She doubtless belonged to 
the four hundred, but was not ready when 
the storm broke, and among the bitter com- 
plaints of her husband is one, "My breath 
is strange to my wife." Mrs. Edwards, in 
the parsonage, was spared such trials. Cer- 
tain elders are reported to have said in an- 
other case to their minister, "You manage 
to keep humble and we will see that you are 
poor." 

From that heaven-made union came three 
sons and eight daughters, seventy-five 
grand-children, and a posterity that has 
already amounted to fourteen hundred. 



1 8 Jonathan Edwards 

It was said in a later day, the population 
of the United States is made up of so many 
millions of whites, so many of blacks, and 
the Beecher family. Not that it was so 
numerous, but Lyman and Roxanna 
Beecher did contribute a brilliant and dis- 
tinguished galaxy of sons and daughters to 
the Republic. 

The Edwardses form a larger tribe of 
sturdier worth. 

It seems monstrous that the blood of 
Jonathan Edwards should, in a single in- 
stance, have turned into a libertine and mur- 
derer in the veins of Aaron Burr ; a warning 
reminder that while faith may be trans- 
mitted, the kingdom of heaven does not flow 
through the arteries. 

The presidents of Princeton lie in a sep- 
arate burying-ground. At the feet of Pres- 
idents Burr and Edwards, father and grand- 
father, lie the dishonored remains of Aaron 
Burr. The small monument has become 
badly marred by the chipping of relic 
hunters. It is a melancholy warning to all 
students at Princeton and everywhere. 



Jonathan Edwards 19 

Over against this solitary case, Winship 
has set that of the Jukes family. One loafer 
has let loose upon the country a posterity 
of twelve hundred paupers, tramps, imbe- 
ciles, and criminals. That one family has 
spent, in the aggregate, twenty-three hun- 
dred years in the poorhouse, 

Though it stands forever true, "Ye must 
be born again/' the power of heredity is 
also true and shows how desirable it is that 
families of the Edwards type become fash- 
ionable again in the upper ranks, rather 
than that the Jukes tribe should spread over 
the land. It goes hard with the doctrine 
of the survival of the fittest when we be- 
hold such contrasts. 

EDUCATION 

This began many generations before he 
was born. There have been prenatal forces 
at work on us all in the long past. Hence 
the tremendous and awful responsibility of 
the parental relation. Is not part of the 
lessening parenthood of the cultured, how- 
ever unjustifiable, due to a perception of this 



20 Jonathan Edwards 

truth? Or is there some tendency in eagles 
and lions to small posterity? It wai 
so with the Edwards 

His development continued in the par- 
sonage under his gifted and cultured father 
and mother. At the end of seven yea- 
was under deep religious concern. I' 
he was ten he led boy companions to erect 
a booth in the swamp for the purpose of 
prayer and religious conversation. At 
twelve he was grappling with the problem 
of materialism, which he ridiculed. 11 
wrote an essay on the works of a spider. 
He knew Greek, Latin, and Hebrew before 
entering Yale College at the age of thirteen. 
At fourteen he was voraciously devouring 
Locke on the Human Understanding. He 
graduated at sixteen. He taught and took 
graduate work in Yale, was pastor of a 
Presbyterian Church in Xew York for eight 
months. Thence he returned to his Alma 
Mater, engaged in further study, and acted 
as one of the tutors. At twenty-four he be- 
came associated with his grandfather as co- 
pastor at Northampton. After spending 



Jonathan Edwards 21 

twenty-three years in that place, he was dis- 
missed from his pulpit, and after eight 
months' delay, was called to a small church 
in Stockbridge, where much of his work 
was expended upon a fragment of the 
lingering Indian tribe. Thence he was called 
to the presidency of Nassau Hall, afterward 
Princeton College, and after thirty-four 
days died of small-pox, in the prime of life, 
at the age of fifty-five. 

WHERE 

His growth took place amid the scenes 
of the Connecticut River Valley. Go to 
Northampton now, and looking southward, 
one catches a glimpse of Mount Tom and 
Mount Holyoke through the haze. The 
Connecticut River Railroad disturbs the 
quiet of the valley. The fine river is 
spanned by a bridge of over one thousand 
feet. Thriving factories add wealth and 
contentment to nearly fifteen thousand peo- 
ple glad to garnish the sepulcher of this 
prophet whom they drove out one hundred 
and fifty years ago. There are nine 



22 Jonathan Edvvards 

churches and a collegiate institute in the 
city. 

rtliampton was a semi-socialistic or a 
"decreed" town at the start, after the man- 
ner of Lincoln, Neb., and Greeley, Colo., in 
later years. In the days of young Edwards 
the valley was clad with forests and undis- 
turbed by the rush of modern life. 

It has been prolific soil for men and 
women of lofty stature. Along its course 
of four hundred and fifty miles between the 
White and the Green Mountains, from the 
Canada border down to Long Island Sound, 
there have sprung up Dartmouth, Amherst, 
Holyoke, Wesleyan, and Vale Coll- 
But among all the forest of human growth 
in these nurseries of manhood, none have 
ever loomed aloft as Jonathan Edwards. 

The forest was his study as well as the 
college. Into it he led his boy comrades 
for prayer. Thither in maturity, he guided 
his horse, dismounting at times for con- 
templation of nature, meditation, and 
prayer. There on one occasion he had such 
a vision of that Savior who himself was 



Jonathan Edwards 23 

wont to go apart and tarry all night, that 
Edwards tells us he wept aloud for over 
an hour. There, on another occasion, was 
he in communion with the sublime Ruler 
of the universe until he was moved to long 
and ecstatic weeping. Only weak men weep 
easily. Great souls require profound causes. 

LOCAL 

Foreign travel, with all its advantages, 
is not a necessity to the development of such 
great men. His only sojourn out of the 
Connecticut Valley, aside from five weeks 
at Princeton, where he died, lasted but 
eight months. It was by the Hudson at 
New York, then a comparatively small 
town. A Presbyterian Church there invited 
Edwards to its pulpit expressly to defend 
Calvinism. They wished to retain him, but 
he felt impelled to return to Yale for further 
study — wise example for young men of 
our day. The church occupied stood on 
Wall Street. It was afterward carefully 
taken down, the stones were removed to 



2 4 Jonathan Hduards 

Jersey City, and stands in its original form, 
still used for religious worship. 

During his ook 

] " u • up the river for n and 

Divine communion, and 
things this: "Theheai is one of 

holiness, to be with God and my 

ermtyin Divine love and 1 
with Christ. I had mat ,. !t l, 

him there," 

Whoever may be deprived 
travel maj 

failure often to develop th 
As a quaint old id: 

" it oft haa been my lot to m 
The proud, conceit ■ , rki 

And if a word yon cl 
The trm 

It is said Kant never traveled beyond 
the near province of his home, but ' was 
wise enough to draw upon all travelers for 
what they had found in their journe 
Cariyle was once, for a very short time, out 
of his country, across the Irish Channel; 



Jonathan Edwards 25 

but had he not perspective? How much 
of a traveler was Elijah? The man of 
Nazareth was but once across the border 
during his mature life. 

Those who must stay at home have the 
globe at their feet and the heaven above, 
the two greatest sights afforded by travel. 
Edwards got acquainted with them and 
moved a wide w r orld on both sides of the 
ocean from Northampton and Stockbridge. 

Before leaving the scenes of his childhood 
and youth, note a glimpse or two behind 
the scenes. 

What a home was that in which he grew ! 
The boy was well sistered, but not spoiled 
by the whole ten of them. His own eleven, 
three sons and eight daughters, were polite 
as royalty. When their parents entered the 
room the children rose and remained stand- 
ing until father and mother were seated. 
This with a grace, ease, and naturalness far 
superior to the irreverent boorishness which 
regards the fifth commandment as an in- 
fringement on the rights of young America. 



26 Jonathan Edwards 

In an important sense the boy is his own 
father. That lad of eight years, going to 
prayer five times a day, and when a youth of 
nineteen writing resolutions for self-gov- 
ernment, until at last they ran up to seventy, 
was creating character. Here are some 
samples : 

''Resolved to do whatever I think to be 
most to God's glory and my own good, 
profit, and pleasure in the whole of my 
existence. 

"Resolved to do whatever I think to be 
my duty for the good and advantage of 
mankind in general. 

"Resolved to live with all my might while 
I do live." 

In this long code of seventy rules of 
conduct, there is a powerful tendency to 
legality and morbid introspection. But let 
the scrawny, rambling sapling, smitten with 
premature dry rot, sneer at the stalwart, 
storm-defying oak. So let the shambling, 
smoking, tippling devotee of low literature 
and loose habits sneer at this iron youth 
of Puritanical growth. 



Jonathan Edwards 27 

WHEN 

A man's times have much to do with him 
and he in turn with them. His character 
and fate are acted upon by contempora- 
neous men and events. He, if gifted with 
dominating personality, in some measure 
decides their fate. 

The English rulers over the American 
Colonies during the life of Edwards were 
the weak and vacillating Queen Anne, 
George the First, followed by George the 
Second, whose courts were still reeking with 
much of the corruption that had defiled the 
reign of Charles the Second. Already 
England was driving out her best faith and 
blood to America. 

This country needed such men as Ed- 
wards to stand like some Teneriffe amid 
the dashing currents of political, moral, and 
religious tides that swirled about him. 

In 1753 while Edwards was preaching 
and writing in the swamp town of Stock- 
bridge, the Ohio Company was formed. 
The French were projecting a line of forts 



28 Jonathan Edwards 

from Lake Eric to the Ohio River as a 
barrier, behind which to monopolize the 
West. 

A young Virginian, twenty-two years of 
age, went to the French commissioner and 
demanded free passage beyond that line of 
forts in the name of Virginia and the 
English government. His name was 
George Washington. The next year he 
returned, fought the French and surren- 
dered at Fort Necessity, July 4, 1754. This 
disaster united the American Colonies for 
the first time. The next year came Brad- 
dock's defeat, where Pittsburg now stands. 
In November, 1758, England captured Fort 
Duquesne, and the Ohio River passed for- 
ever from under French dominion. Daniel 
Boone passed through the Alleghanies to 
the "dark and bloody ground'' only ten 
years later, while the mighty future empire, 
known as the Northwest Territory, was left 
mainly to the savages for over twenty years 
longer. 

In the midst of all this movement, Jona- 



Jonathan Edwards 29 

than Edwards stood in Northampton, at 
Stockbridge, and called thence to Princeton, 
he died in March, 1758, eight months be- 
fore the capture of Fort Duquesne and the 
passing of the Ohio River Valley under 
Saxon dominion. 

In the intellectual world he was contem- 
porary with Cotton Mather and Benjamin 
Franklin, two of the best literary lights of 
his day. 

In England, John Wesley and Bishop 
Butler were the men nearest the stature of 
Edwards, the American. 

That was a great trinity entering the 
Saxon world when the awakenings under 
Edwards, the revival under Wesley, and the 
"Analogy of Religion" of Butler made their 
advent. 

Some of the greater intellects in Europe 
were Malebranche, Leibnitz, and Berkeley. 
Edwards was their intellectual peer on this 
side of the Atlantic, but dependent upon 
none of them. 



30 Jonathan Edwards 

BLUE LAWS 

Jonathan Edwards fell heir to these myth- 
ical, but much-vaunted traditions. They 
were largely, if not wholly, fictitious. 

They have not yet been found. Judge 
Smith says, in the "New York Historical 
Collections," Volume IV : "The author had 
the curiosity to resort to them when the 
commissioners met at New Haven in 1767. 
A parchment-covered book was handed him 
as the only volume in the office passing 
under this odd title. So far as the common 
idea of the Blue Laws being a collection 
of rules from being true, that they are only 
records of convictions, consonant in the 
judgment of magistrates to the Word of 
God and the dictates of reason." 

The late A. R. Spofford, congressional 
librarian, was a man likely to find trace of 
such famous laws, especially in preparing 
his cyclopedia. 

He says: "Blue Laws, a name for cer- 
tain laws said to have been made in the 
early government of New Haven, Conn., 



Jonathan Edwards 31 

anent breaches of manners and morality, 
but most of which probably never existed." 

If, as is conjectured, the tradition of such 
laws originated farther back in the foul 
moral atmosphere, hovering about the court 
of Charles the Second as a slur on those 
who loved clean living and followed the 
Puritans to America, then the brighter the 
blue, the better for the world. 

The Blue Stocking woman never existed. 
Stillingfleet's presence was deemed neces- 
sary to the literary pleasure of meetings 
which drew certain intellectual women to 
the club of which he was the center. He 
wore blue stockings, and the name, by 
transfer, was applied to the women who 
were drawn to such meetings as clustered 
around him. 

Parallel, but different in tone, was the 
ideal known as "Peter Parley," with his 
lame foot and crutch, surrounded with 
eager children listening to his stories. It 
was always a grievous disenchantment to 
meet the real Peter Parley in the splendid 
figure of S. G. Goodrich. 



32 Jonathan Edwards 

The modern cry against Blue Laws in 
support of Sabbath desecration and saloons, 
with their attendant moral laxity, arises 
most generally amid clouds of smoke, much 
bluer than any old traditional law r s, while 
the noses of men who send forth the cry 
are almost as blue as the smoke, whence 
this falsehood issues. 

Pure blue is Divine. The robe of the 
high priest was glorified by this as one of 
its triple colors. It is the same as the color 
on one of the foundation walls in the 
heavenly Jerusalem. It is the color of the 
pavement of the apocalyptic throne. 

And since the universe of God is, and 
must be, forever under law, we may well 
crave whatever existed of the much-derided 
Blue Laws, as they developed into the 
majestic nature of the Edwardses. 

A PAIR OF THEM 

It will help to bring out the life and 
character of our subject to run a parallel 
between him and the other great religious 
leader of that century, John Wesley. 



Jonathan Edwards 33 

1st. John and Jonathan were born the 
same year — the Englishman in the rectory 
at Ep worth, an obscure town in England. 
Jonathan at East Windsor in the Connect- 
icut Valley in a manse. 

An enrollment of the most illustrious and 
best of mankind would show the parsonage 
to be a good nesting-place for humanity. 

2d. Both were well born. John's father, 
Samuel Wesley, was a probable descendant 
of the Wellingtons, himself poetical, queer, 
and a little difficult for his wife to manage. 
However, with her nineteen children, acting 
as. mother and teacher, and afterwards coun- 
selor to her most distinguished son at places 
where his destiny and that of Methodism 
was being settled, and by getting three of 
her sons through the university and many 
of her daughters up into a level of high 
culture and literary refinement, she proved 
herself one of the remarkable women of 
the world. 

Jonathan, as we have seen, was equally 
well born. 

3d. They were not equally well married. 
3 



34 Jonathan Edwards 

We can not estimate how much Edwards 
would have suffered had it not been for 
Sarah Pierpont — name even yet suggestive 
of great talent for economics and combina- 
tions. With wifely jealousy and solicitude 
she looked after the standing and influence 
of her brave, unsuspecting husband. On 
one occasion, in his absence, the pulpit was 
supplied by Rev. Mr. Buell. Apprehensive 
lest the favor with which he was being 
received might discount her husband, she 
confesses that she had to pray mightily to 
be pleased with his success, but admits that 
she obtained grace to desire God's blessing 
upon the preacher. 

Her devoutness of spirit was the farthest 
removed from Puritanical coldness. She 
said of herself: "I had a constant, clear, 
and lively sense of the heavenly sweetness 
of Christ's excellent and transcendent love; 
of his nearness to me and my dearness to 
him." Though in perfect health, sometimes 
she fainted away and lost strength under 
overwhelming religious impressions. At 
times she leaped with joy and exultation. 



Jonathan Edwards 35 

In contrast with such experiences, what 
moonshine is the "sweetness and light'*' of 

a modern,, distinguished literary lecturer ! 

Thus she has been prepared for the day 
of disaster, and when, with large family and 
no income, the household went to an Indian 
mission at Stockbridge, and even there the 
tongue of slander pursued this noblest son 
of Xew England, Mrs. Edwards and her 
refined and talented daughters engaged in 
such devices as the making of fans to be 
sold to help eke out a living. Those fans 
still send a cooling breeze over the people 
of Northampton to keep them in mind of 
the outrageous conduct of their forefathers. 
John Wesley might have been happily mar- 
ried had he followed his heart and head, 
but family officiousness interfered and pre- 
vented a union between him and Grace Mur- 
ray, every way congenial and efficient as 
colaborer. 

We can but think the great man was 
weak in yielding to Charles, his brother, 
Whitefield, and others, and may have de- 
served some of the penalty of reported hair- 



36 Jonathan Edwards 

pulling received from the woman he did 
marry, and who went away never to be 
recalled. 

It is still a query, and will remain so, 
whether a happy marriage and a beautiful 
home might not have interfered with the 
wide travel, great industry, and almost 
superhuman labors of the founder of Meth- 
odism. 

4th. Both John and Jonathan were nat- 
uralists of the first order. Had they pur- 
sued their early tendencies for the explora- 
tion of nature, they could have rivaled Au- 
dubon and Humboldt. 

5th. Both were metaphysicians, poten- 
tially of the first rank; equal to a Spinoza 
or an Immanuel Kant. Edwards floundered 
in much darkness because of his system, 
while Wesley escaped into a freer phi- 
losophy. 

6th. Both came into the Divine life after 
a long and painful search. Jonathan at the 
age of five was in secret prayer at least 
five times a day and was unawares a Meth- 
odist long before the Englishman. He was 



Jonathan Edwards 37 

Methodistic when he led the lads into the 
booth for prayer. Most boys would have 
preferred frog-sticking. Was he not a 
Methodist in writing seventy rules to gov- 
ern personal conduct? Before he was 
seventeen years old he describes in glow- 
ing and charming language a "sweet burn- 
ing of heart." 

John sought through long sorrowful years 
for light. He was a masterful instructor in 
Oxford, associated already with the Holy 
Club; came to America to convert the In- 
dians ; weary of heart went to the Aldersgate 
Street Meeting, and there, eighteen years 
after Jonathan's "sweet burning of heart," 
is able to declare, "my heart was strangely 
warmed." 

7th. Both taught the witness of the Spirit 
as the privilege of all believers — Wesley 
sooner than Edwards, and with more direct 
appeal to Scripture authority, as corrobo- 
rated by experience ; Edwards in more spec- 
ulative and philosophical style in such 
utterances as, "His Spirit is equally united 
to the faculties of their souls." He also 



38 Jonathan Edwards 

appeals to Scripture in such quotations as, 
"Not they but Christ lives in them/' 

8th. Both were great revivalists. The 
Englishman was anticipated by the Amer- 
ican. He was true and large hearted enough 
to acknowledge this. 

Walking from London to Oxford, Wes- 
ley read of the great awakening in America. 
He records in his journal, "This is mar- 
velous in our eyes," and hopes that England 
may not lag behind in the path of grace. 

9th. Both were disciplinarians. In the 
Methodist Discipline is this statement: "In 
the latter end of the year 1739 eight or ten 
persons who appeared to be deeply con- 
vinced of sin and earnestly groaning for 
redemption, came to Mr. Wesley in Lon- 
don." 

Then follows the General Rules constitut- 
ing a brief synopsis of Christian conduct 
both negative and positive. Every rule is 
a condensation of Bible teaching, form- 
ing a code which can never be improved 
upon nor abated. 

It is almost startling to find Jonathan 



Jonathan Edwards 39 

Edwards at Northampton calling the people 
together after the great awakening and pre- 
senting a similar set of rules for religious 
living, to be signed by the converts, and 
these rules are almost identical with those 
found in the Methodist Discipline. Wesley 
did not copy from Edwards, nor could 
Edwards from Wesley. 

10th. Both were in their tendencies High 
Churchmen. Wesley never intended to leave 
the Church of England, though her pulpits 
shut him out. Edwards was so jealous of 
Puritan ecclesiasticism that he could 
scarcely tolerate lay preaching at all, and at 
last broke with his people for their loose 
views on the sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper. 

nth. In speculative theology they stood 
apart. Wesley was an Arminian, but so mod- 
erated in his views as to create a new type, 
almost cousin to evangelical Calvinism. 

Edwards as an a priori philosopher was 
a Calvinistic Fatalist; but as saints and 
soul winners, this Arminian and Calvinist 
grasped hands. 



40 Jonathan Edwards 

12th. Both were hospitable toward the 
truth. Each showed his honesty and great- 
ness by revising his views and moving for- 
ward in his opinions, illustrating the fact 
that wise men change, fools never. 

13th. Both were masterly organizers. 
Herein is one reason for the perpetuity of 
Wesley's work as in contrast to that of 
Whitefield. In war or statecraft Wesley 
was equal to an Alexander or a Wolsey. 

Edwards exerted his power over Congre- 
gationalism while confined to a remote pro- 
vincial town. This requires greatness. 

14th. Both endured apostolic persecution. 
Wesley was compelled to stand upon his 
father's tombstone in order to preach at 
Epworth ; was excluded from the pulpits of 
his own Church; mobbed, pursued, stoned, 
and egged by the vilest of men, incited often 
by ordained clergymen. 

Jonathan was reviled, banished, and pur- 
sued, as we shall more particularly describe. 

15th. Both were great preachers. Wes- 
ley's sermons were clear, comprehensive, 
convincing, and though preaching daily and 



Jonathan Edwards 41 

often several times a day, his sermons are 
a classic worthy of study. 

Jonathan was peerless in this country. 
No man has yet appeared with his power 
to alarm and move men. 

16th. Personally they were unlike. Wes- 
ley was frail in youth, small of stature, never 
weighing one hundred and twenty-five 
pounds. His head was fine, features strik- 
ing, with the nose of a commander. He 
retained his vigor and endured superhuman 
labors forty years after the death of Ed- 
wards. 

Edwards was healthy in his youth, slen- 
der, over six feet tall, with refined features, 
somewhat oval in shape, with a lofty brow, 
dark, luminous eyes, which seemed in the 
pulpit to be looking beyond the people, using 
almost no gestures, and yet compelling men 
on one occasion to seize the church pillars 
as if to hold them out of hell and fairly 
drove them to flee from the wrath to come. 
On one occasion a brother minister sitting 
in the pulpit plucked the gown of Edwards 
and cried, "Is not God merciful ?" 



42 Jonathan Edwards 

If Wesley reached America from his 
multitudinous chapels and open air preach- 
ing, Edwards reached far-away Scotland 
where Wesley had been able to effect but 
little. 

17th. Both wore gowns in the pulpit and 
were exceedingly tidy and particular in their 
dress. Wesley wore a wig, and the only 
poor pictures of Edw r ards look as though 
he did. 

18th. Both came in times of great relig- 
ious declension. In England the state of 
religion was illustrated by hunting, gam- 
bling, and drunkenness, even among the 
clergy, while the people w T ere besotted. 

In America the Puritan had lost much 
of his purity and sublime reverence for God. 
It was said of many elders in the Church 
that they "would yield neither a p'int of 
doctrine nor a pint of rum/' Quarreling, 
fighting, drunkenness, licentiousness, and 
general debauchery were rife, paving the 
way for French infidelity and the moral 
wreck of young America. The shrewdness 
and secular philosophy of Franklin, the al- 



Jonathan Edwards 43 

most unparalleled political skill of Alexan- 
der Hamilton, the Constitution written by 
Jefferson, the stately grandeur of George 
Washington, could never have saved this 
country from a fate like that of the French 
Revolution. So John and Jonathan came 
in time to be God's ministers to the two 
nations now directing the world's destiny. 
In this, our time, the gospel of civiliza- 
tion and salvation in the East is no longer 
under the banner of the elephant, the cres- 
cent, and the dragon, but the double cross 
and the Stars and Stripes whisper back and 
forth in all the skies, "Peace on earth, good 
will to men," because this pair of men came 
to the English-speaking world at the same 
time. 

METAPHYSICIAN 

When the name of Jonathan Edwards is 
spoken, our impression is that he was above 
all a metaphysician. Metaphysics implies 
immense difficulty and often great confu- 
sion. It is said that a Scotchman belonging 
to that masterful metaphysical race of 



44 Jonathan Edwards 

thinkers, undertook to define metaphysics. 
"It is twa men talking; one does na ken 
what the other means, neither does he ken 
what he means himself/' 

Not irreverently may we apply that to 
much of what Edwards has left in his writ- 
ings. The same may be attributed to most 
of the long list of the knights of logomachy. 
When one has been subjected to the din of 
the conflict his situation is not inaptly de- 
scribed by the lines, 

" The centipede was happy quite 

Until the toad for fun 
Said, ' Pray, sir, which leg comes after which ?' 
Which wrought his mind to such a pitch 
He lay distracted in a ditch, 

Considering how to run." 

This, however, is the lesser side of the 
case. 

The discipline of metaphysical study not 
only develops great intellectual power, but 
trains men for practical life. It was almost 
impossible to escape from Jonathan Ed- 
wards in his pursuit of human motives. 
This he displayed in his masterful preaching 



Jonathan Edwards 45 

as well as in his collision with the people 
who dismissed and excluded him from the 
pulpits of Northampton. 

When in Stockbridge he confronted the 
rascality of Indian agents who systemat- 
ically wronged the wards of the nation, and 
bitterly resented the interference of Ed- 
wards. But he hunted them down with a 
relentlessness that finally drove them from 
the field of conflict. 

Without his metaphysical training he 
could not have been such a master of meth- 
ods and motives. He was a great moral 
detective. 

It is always true that the average college- 
bred man, with the all-round discipline of 
his intellectual power, enters the race of 
life at great advantage, no matter what 
sphere he enters. 

We know of no quality of intellectual 
greatness not possessed by Edwards. 

It is doubtful if he was even deficient in 
humor or its lesser sister, wit. We do not 
associate this quality with men of his rank, 
devoted to such serious work as befell him. 



46 Jonathan Edwards 

Who would have suspected Lincoln of his 
irresistible humor by looking at his sad 
face while measuring his tremendous re- 
sponsibilities ? Who thinks of the humor 
of John Wesley or St. Paul? Both pos- 
sessed it in a rare degree. There is a tradi- 
tion that Edwards was asked whether he en- 
joyed the witness of the Spirit — more prob- 
ably the questioner used the expression "full 
assurance of faith." — Edwards replied, 
''Yes, when the east wind is not blowing.'''' 
The humorous force of the reply is best un- 
derstood by residents of the north Atlantic 
Coast. 

A great metaphysician is composed of a 
diversity of those gifts necessary to deal 
with and apply abstract subjects. In these 
Edwards was highly endowed. 

LOGICIAN 

He was potentially another Aristotle. 
Like that great master, he was often carried 
away by that unmanageable runaway, the 
syllogism. What violence has been done 



Jonathan Edwards 47 

to truth by this headstrong servant of 
reason ! 

Edwards was relentless and fairly fierce 
in argument. Friend and foe alike went 
down before him. So, often, did humanity, 
and also any consistent thinkable divinity. 
In this Edwards often worsted himself. He 
came from his battles defensive and offen- 
sive for what he called freedom of the will, 
wounded and bleeding in his feelings. 

It is of doubtful advantage, in our day, 
to pursue him through it all. Thousands 
of pages are not worth the paper on which 
his disputations are written. 

If at all advisable for any to read them 
over, he might do so as astronomers inves- 
tigate the theories of Ptolemy in order 
to note by what steps the giants of the 
race have led the way. 

PSYCHOLOGY 

In this he was also highly endowed. The 
science lags behind those dealing with mat- 
ter. It is not so sure-footed and much 
slower in its progress. 



48 Jonathan Edwards 

To-day there is a muddle of psycho- 
physics; in its name much confusion and 
hurt has befallen our schools. 

In early youth Edwards encountered this 
and wrote against materialism. He was 
then in advance of his times. 

Under the wise editorial direction of 
Commissioner Harris, over sixty volumes 
have recently been brought to the aid of 
the teachers of the nation. Among them 
all, the work of Professor Baldwin, of 
Princeton University, is one of the sanest, 
clearest, and safest. He is philosophically, 
as well as locally, a worthy successor of 
President Edwards. 

In the psychology of Edwards was found 
the chief cause for his unhappy confusion 
of thought, which helped to drive him on 
to his fatalism. After the manner of his 
time, he failed to discriminate between the 
sensibilities and the will. Hence will, as 
he conceived it, w r as subjected to extraneous 
influences and determined from without. 
It was charged up with what did not belong 
to it, but to the emotions. In his concept, 



Jonathan Edwards 49 

will is lacking in singleness, freedom, and 
vigor. It is not causal. 

This confusion interferes with the tes- 
timony of consciousness, that fundamental, 
final witness in the cause of freedom. Every 
man knows he is free and has the power 
of choice and there is an end of it. 

Upon that fact is based all human re- 
sponsibility. Upon it is founded civil gov- 
ernment and especially the judicial depart- 
ment of it. Here rests the righteousness of 
Divine government. To this conscious free- 
dom God makes his appeal, and it was when 
in harmony with this Edwards the mighty 
preacher swept men before him into the 
kingdom of God. 

His a priori method was also his own 
enemy. Though Lord Bacon had broken 
from that mode of argument one hundred 
years before, Edwards clung to it in his 
metaphysical theology. 

When preaching, he often broke away 

from it for practical purposes. While this 

pre-Baconian system held on, it compelled 

the God of Edwards to know through all 

4 



50 Jonathan Edwards 

eternity the unknowable contingency. That 
is equal to compelling one to know a non- 
entity as equivalent to something, and to 
recognize zero as equal to some positive 
quantity. 

As surely as confusion must arise by 
blending mind and matter, so must it come 
by confounding sensibility and will. Add 
to that reasoning from theory to fact, and 
we are sure to bring confusion confounded. 

Edwards was, during the greater part of 
his active life, a child of the Old Testament, 
though advancing into the broader, clearer 
light of the New. He reminds us of the 
reasoning of Job and his friends. Like 
the latter, he made wide excursions into the 
untrodden realms of the Divine order. He 
drew inferences true in theory but false in 
application. But he rose above the plane 
of Job's friends into the loftier one of the 
patriarch himself, whom he greatly re- 
sembled in his unbendable integrity. But 
like Job, he found mystery and confusion 
enveloping himself and all existence. 

These apparently contradictory conditions 



Jonathan Edwards 51 

made any theodicy impossible. Like Job, 
however, he laid his hand upon his mouth 
and repented in dust and ashes. Some time 
before his death he was emerging from the 
sphere of Job into that of John. This is 
a way with many great Calvinists. 

DOCTRINAIRE 

He was a Calvinistic Fatalist, but not 
strictly a copyist. Augustine was able to 
blunder along in that wide field of error 
alone. John Calvin was a follower but not 
an imitator. Edwards was a third able to 
walk alone. No man fought a more vigor- 
ous battle for the truth and error of that 
view of God and humanity. 

Of the views of the Arminians he could 
have appealed to God in the language of the 
Psalm, "Do I not hate them with a perfect 
hatred?" He was Arminius-mad and 
sought occasion to smite his system. 

When a century later Daniel D. Whedon 
scented the tracks of Calvinism, he was in 
a quiver for battle in magazine and com- 



52 Jonathan Edwards 

mentary. So Edwards saw in Arminian 
doctrine the red rag. 

Does it smack of presumption to venture 
the opinion that neither of these intellectual 
giants understood the views of the other 
or quite understood himself? When men 
confer rather than dispute, they make this 
discovery. We fancy that in the clear light 
where we know as we are known, these 
great men walk the golden streets arm in 
arm. 

Ordinarily the great masters are tentative 
in theoretical science, physical or mental. 
Usually the smaller followers are certain, 
dogmatic, and combative. 

No sphere of human thought has dis- 
played this fact more clearly than the con- 
troversy between Calvinistic and Arminian 
theology. While the former, being more 
severe and exclusive, has had the hardest 
time with human consciousness and the love 
of God manifested in the gift of his Son, 
it is often driven to exclaim, "Who art 
thou that repliest against God ?" The latter 
has found it necessarv to modifv its views 



Jonathan Edwards 53 

of Divine sovereignty in order to avoid anti- 
nomianism. 

In his deeper, better self, Edwards was 
tentative and tolerant of unwelcome truth; 
holding himself ready to advance into new 
fields. His intolerance was displayed only 
in a logical battle where, as intellectual 
fencer, he was dangerous and deadly. In 
that way he greatly wasted his strength. 
Let most of his contention go into forget- 
fulness and rest under his tombstone, like 
the memory of his duelist grandson, whose 
ashes sleep by his feet. 

DOUBLE 

As we have seen, there are two Ed- 
wardses. In a lesser way, all men are 
double. This was magnified in this great 
soul. As metaphysician, logician, and 
philosopher, he evolved a Divine govern- 
ment absurd, fanciful, horrible, intolerable. 
In the light of that speculative theology, 
Edwards came to be named as "the babe- 
damning monster." His God was no better, 
than Brahm, Vishnu, or Nirvana, if as good. 



54 Jonathan Edwards 

While young he speculated his way 
through that a priori method into a view of 
Deity whereby he announced that space is 
God. Later he thought he discovered that 
will is God. Hence, of course, God is will. 
Later he announced that essence or being is 
God. As a sequence, the greater the amount 
of essence, the greater the authority and 
reverence due. Can it be that he did not 
discover, as a sequel, that if Satan out- 
measures man in essence he is entitled to 
command, "Bow down and worship me?" 
Would it be irreverent to say that this view 
of God is equivalent to the doctrine that 
might makes right, turning our Heavenly 
Father into a monstrous universal bully? 
Edwards must have forgotten in all this, 
"Who by searching can find out God?" 

MYSTIC 

On this side of his being we shall find 
the better Edwards. There are two kinds 
of mysticism ; that which floats in vapors 
of the imagination and fills life with fogs 
of variegated color to abide a little and float 



Jonathan Edwards 55 

away forever. Edwards was. not this kind 
of mystic. 

There is that which opens Godwards. 
Without capability of the former type, this 
latter might not be. The Wesleys with 
their haunted rectory at Epworth were able 
to escape into the witness of the Spirit and 
the revival of the nineteenth century. 

The capability of such superstitions as the 
Salem witchcraft, haunting ghosts, and 
modern spiritualism, with all its deceiving 
prodigy, if rightly utilized, would lead to 
harmony with angels and God. It was the 
sympathetic son of thunder and of conso- 
lation that prepared John for the apocalypse. 

Edwards the boy seer, gazing into the 
heavens overlooking the Connecticut Valley, 
looking into its flowers and forests with rapt 
vision, studying the marvels of the spider- 
web and the bands of Orion, writing rules 
for self-government, ethereal and senti- 
mental, whose "sweet burning of heart" and 
weeping for joy by the hour, this man was 
brother to St. Bernard, Fenelon, and 
Fletcher, who dwell in a larger world. 



56 Jonathan Edwards 

When studying him thus, one is tempted 
to rhapsody and indiscriminate praise. It 
seems unthinkable that such a spirit could 
weave a system of metaphysics, logically 
involving the Almighty as the author of the 
sin of Adam and the crime of Judas, while 
turning his own beautiful little ones into 
vipers, fit only for hell. 

Regarded in his double character, he re- 
minds one of some mighty monster of the 
deep, enmeshed in a net of unbreakable steel 
wire. Struggle as he may, he can not free 
himself. He is wearied and hurt by the 
effort, which causes the seas to boil around 
him. 

ECCLESIASTIC 

Ecclesiasticism is but a choice of Church 
government. Of this there are four stages. 

In Rome the pope is head and source of 
authority. In the English establishment 
and similar Churches the bishop. In the 
Presbyterial Church the elders rule. In the 
Congregational, the people. 

None of these exist in pure form, each 



Jonathan Edwards 57 

involving something of those above and 
below. It is an unsettled question with 
Protestants which is nearest God, and there- 
fore, uppermost. All claim the divine or- 
der ; each appropriates the declaration, "All 
things are yours ; ye are Christ's, and Christ 
is God's." 

Each has, at times, run into intolerance. 
The most democratic often, after fighting 
its own battles for liberty to think and act 
for itself, has later on fought as vigorously 
to make others think and act in the same 
way. Of the Pilgrims it was declared, 
"They sought a faith's pure shrine; free- 
dom to worship God." Later on, Roger 
Williams found it necessary to betake him- 
self to Rhode Island for freedom to wor- 
ship God. After serving his day, an apple- 
tree, it is said, grew on his grave, sending 
its roots through his skeleton. Upon it 
there were apples which people ate, and 
until the question, "Who ate Roger Wil- 
liams?" is answered, Puritan persecution 
will not be forgotten. 

As an ecclesiastic, though High Church 



58 m Jonathan Edwards 

in type, Edwards was indifferent toward 
denominationalism, and was far from being 
sectarian. 

He began his ministry as a Presbyterian. 
After his expulsion from Northampton he 
was invited to consider the pastorate of a 
Presbyterian Church in Scotland. Among 
other things in his reply he says, "The 
Presbyterian way has ever appeared to me 
more agreeable to the Word of God and 
the reason and nature of things. " 

He became, by constraint of his religious 
opinions, the father of New England Con- 
gregationalism. 

The Unitarian wing of that form of 
Church government was a theological rather 
than a denominational reaction. It well- 
nigh swept away all Boston and much of 
New England. 

One of the most significant concessions 
to evangelical aggressive Christianity is 
seen in the fact that now, after the lapse of 
about a century, that branch of Congrega- 
tionalism is making overtures for a reunion. 



Jonathan Edwards 59 

This shows that the literary elegance, pul- 
pit oratory, and ethical religion, so charm- 
ing in Channing and others, is lacking in 
the power of conquest. Hampered as it 
was by his awful philosophical theology, the 
Edwards type was far better as a savor of 
life unto life. 

How he came to be the father of Congre- 
gationalism may be seen when we remember 
that the Puritan forefathers were never 
quite free from the theory of union between 
Church and State. Hence civil privileges 
depended, in some important features, upon 
Church membership. To secure this, unre- 
generate men were admitted to the Church 
and its sacraments. Dr. Stoddard, grand- 
father and co-pastor with Edwards, became 
the earnest and successful advocate of this 
half-way covenant ; so that the Church was 
being loaded down and encumbered with 
a membership largely irreligious and even 
immoral. 

This resulted in such loose manners as to 
corrupt the young people. As a vigilant 



60 Jonathan Edwards 

pastor Edwards discovered the circulation 
of vile literature and the practice of viler 
habits in his congregation. 

Whether wisely or not — we are too far 
from the times to judge — he began the great 
battle of his life by striking at this evil, — an 
evil which, in our times, calls loudly for 
a thousand men such as was he. When the 
time came, by agreement with his elders, 
for the exposure by name of the guilty ones, 
the evil was found to have so ramified the 
Church that his counselors called a halt; 
they, possibly, fearing that plucking up the 
tares might destroy the wheat, but more 
probably the motive was family loyalty and 
moral cow r ardice. 

In confronting this evil Edwards was led 
to attack the more serious one of admitting 
unregenerate persons to the communion. 
Here was the old sacramentarian conflict 
over again. It was this abuse which Paul 
attacked in the Church at Corinth, among 
those who "discerned not the Lord's body ;" 
which underlay Luther's attack on the sale 
of indulgences by Tetzel. This was in 



Jonathan Edwards 61 

vogue among the dissipating clergymen of 
the English establishment whom Wesley 
confronted. It is ever obtruding into the 
Church and needs great vigilance as well as 
charity in our day. Edwards was a sacra- 
mentarian ; not a transubstantiation nor a 
consubstantiation teacher. 

The elements of the communion were 
signs of the grace of God received by faith. 
Rome, in her mission work, has added to 
her numbers thousands and hundreds of 
thousands of baptized heathen. It was to 
arrest this in New England that Jonathan 
Edwards made his great struggle and met, 
for the time, with disastrous defeat. The 
movement itself began with Christian gen- 
erosity and was especially favored by Dr. 
Stoddard for the kindliest of motives, but 
it was broken by the sacrifice of Edwards. 
In striking at this abuse of the sacrament 
he also gave the blow which completely 
severed the last connection between Church 
and State. 

Thereafter each congregation assumed 
the right of self-government with only ad- 



62 Jonathan Edwards 

visory assemblies. Hence New England 
Congregationalism. 

The story of his dismissal is humiliating 
and painful. He proposed to make his posi- 
tion clear in a series of sixteen discourses. 
They refused to hear, just as the Jews long 
before had shut their ears. He wrote a 
book for circulation expounding the case. 
This met with an evil reception. A council 
of ministers was called and voted for his 
dismissal by a majority of one. His Church 
ratified it by two hundred to twenty votes. 
Public sentiment was so perverted that all 
the pulpits in the city were, by a town meet- 
ing, shut against him. In mature life, with 
a family of ten children, without income 
and no open door, he was cast upon charity 
tendered him from Scotland for subsistence. 
He, like the Master he served, was crucified 
by the instigation of his own people whom 
he had served for twenty-three years. But 
in all the storm the man rose greater than 
the metaphysician and minister. 

After waiting less than a year he was 
invited to the remote swamp town of Stock- 



Jonathan Edwards 63 

bridge, abundant in fever and ague. The 
congregation was made up of a few whites, 
but mostly Indians. Even there persecution 
pursued him and attempted to prevent the 
call. 

Never before did the character of his 
talented and refined wife and daughters 
shine out more brilliantly than when by 
their handiwork they helped largely to sup- 
port the family. 

It seemed a monstrous waste of talent and 
learning to have this man attempting to 
preach to a congregation of mostly Indians 
through an interpreter; but Bunyan could 
not be buried in Bedford Jail, nor Edwards 
hid in the wilderness around Stockbridge. 
It was there his most renowned work, "The 
Freedom of the Will," was written, and 
from that obscure hiding-place the brainiest 
section of the race, the Scotch, were finding 
him out. After serving an apprenticeship 
of eight years, he was called to the presi- 
dency of Princeton College, in the light of 
whose distinguished history his life went 
out. 



64 Jonathan Edwards 

PREACHER 

Edwards is known more widely by his 
sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry 
God/'' than any other. It was preached at 
Enfield. There is a tradition that some 
people had been all night in prayer before 
the morning when the sermon was de- 
livered with such alarming effect. It is a 
"sovereignty" sermon, but so wide in its 
scope as to include Calvary and mercy. It 
is well worth careful reading. It is a glacier 
of logic, and drives relentlessly down upon 
human indifference purposely to compel men 
to flee for mercy, as multitudes did. It is also 
highly metaphoric and its figures of speech 
are heated like those of the prophets of old 
time. Once cooled, they seemed exceeding 
hard and void of tenderness. Such is the 
sword of the Spirit used to cut away false 
hopes. When studied in the light of his 
purpose to save men, the prophetic meta- 
phors and denunciations of the preacher 
seem not so severe, especially when we re- 
call the condition of his hearers needing 
glacier and volcano. 



Jonathan Edwards 65 

The style was very direct. He does not 
say "men/' but "you." He preached less 
to the sinner than to the Church. The use 
of dynamite is terrific and cruel, but it may 
all aim at fertility and beauty. 

To read the sermon through as now 
printed, thirty minutes is sufficient. Yet 
one is weary with the exertion to grasp, 
analyze, discriminate, and realize both its 
demerits and its far greater worth. It is 
not a model for our day but a warning to 
return from our pulpit platitudes, pettiness, 
and smartness. To break the grasp of com- 
mercialism and frivolousness in our time 
needs Edwards at Enfield revised, but with 
no less directness and fatality of aim. It 
is no time for sneering, but repentance. 

Henry Ward Beecher was the Shake- 
speare of the pulpit during his prime. Though 
contemporary with Canon Liddon, the best 
preacher then of the English Church ; Spur- 
geon, peerless among the Baptists; Joseph 
Parker and Bishop Simpson in this country, 
in some respects Beecher had no peer, but 
many a man was better and more useful. 
When he was lecturing to the theological 



66 Jonathan Edwards 

students of Yale, he was asked during the 
quiz about Edwards. He may not have been 
fairly reported, but it is said he replied, "The 
doom of wickedness is dreadful enough 
without the hideous materialism and hor- 
rible buffoonery of justice which then 
prevailed/' 

When all the latitudinarianism, humani- 
tarianism, and rhetorical fascination for 
which Beecher set the pace, shall show a 
thousandth part of the fruitful efficiency of 
such preaching as "Sinners in the Hands of 
an Angry God/' till then we might better 
allow our sneers to turn to lines of sorrow 
and tears of penitence over the lack of power 
to snatch souls from the burning. 

Jesus was the kindest preacher that ever 
spake to men, but he was the most exacting. 
Gather all the anathemas of prophet and 
apostle from the Old and New Testament; 
they fall far below the terrific denunciations 
of sin that fell from the lips of Jesus. His 
words search through the soul after sins of 
the heart and seal the doom of the sinner 
with most fearful threats. He who said 



Jonathan Edwards 67 

"blessed, mercy, peace, love/' most often, 
also pronounced "woe, woe, woe, torment, 
worm, fire unquenchable, depart, burning." 

Judged by this standard, Edwards was a 
far kinder preacher than those who prophesy 
smooth things. 

There is a fallacy in pronouncing some 
men greater preachers than others, for no 
two excel in the same way. 

The mention of several great preachers 
may serve to bring this out. The American 
pulpit has furnished many great lights. The 
Beechers have made the Congregational pul- 
pit illustrious. Such as Storrs and Patton 
have shown the strength of the Presbyterian. 
Talmage reached the largest audience of any 
man of his time. In Unitarianism, Chan- 
ning had been far grander but for the limi- 
tation he put upon the nature of Christ. 
Methodism had her Russel Bigelow, who 
was to the Western Church what Henry 
Clay was to the stump. John P. Durbin 
was a veritable Chrysostom. Matthew 
Simpson was marvelously magnetic. Ed- 
ward Thomson was more intellectual. 



68 Jonathan Edwards 

Randolph Foster was great in every quality 
making up the preacher. Edwards had no 
equal in his time, if in ours. 

Like all great preachers of evangelical 
Christianity, he held his hearers to the three 
essentials : repentance, regeneration, right- 
eousness. Without all three no preaching 
from the days of the apostles to the end of 
time can be successful. 

Dr. Harris, superintendent of Japanese 
missions on the Pacific Coast and Honolulu, 
says in substance, "Converted Japanese have 
three Scriptures in large letters in their 
chapels. 

"ist. 'All have sinned and come short.' 
The newcomer is held by his Christian 
countryman to that truth persistently till he 
is convinced of sin. Next is a Scripture 
motto : 

"2d. 'Christ died for all/ The uncon- 
verted is held to that till it is accepted. 

"3d. Is the Scripture truth, 'Believe on 
the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be 
saved.' " 

This is their method, and the success sur- 



Jonathan Edwards 69 

passes proportionately that of the American 
Churches on the Pacific Coast. 

One of the most noted living ministers 
in New York and in this country had for 
ten years devoted Sunday evening dis- 
courses to critical discussions, attempting 
to satisfy the intellect. 

He says : "I am having large congrega- 
tions and am making people that come to 
hear me thinkers, but I am not making 
them Christians/' 

He has entirely changed his style to 
affirmations, statements of felt wants and 
fervent presentation of gospel remedies. 
He has fallen at last into the way of Ed- 
wards, Wesley, Paul, and Peter. 

It is worthy of special emphasis that this 
great man was a revivalist. This metaphy- 
sician, matchless in his day; this student, 
almost a recluse, was the revivalist of his 
century on this side of the ocean. 

No love of learning and literature, no 
amount of intellectuality may prevent a man 
from a revival ministry. 

On the other hand, what a rebuke John 



70 Jonathan Edwards 

Wesley, logician, Greek scholar, and fellow 
of Oxford, together with Jonathan Ed- 
wards, present to the flippant, often coarse, 
circus-like performance supposed to be nec- 
essary to affect a modern revival. 

Let the clown depart from the pulpit. 
Even now he is disappearing from that 
strange movement, the Salvation Army, a 
movement possibly made necessary by for- 
malism in the Churches. 

But for the great awakenings led by 
Jonathan Edwards, anticipating the Wes- 
leyan revival with all the curious excite- 
ments and strange phenomena repudiated by 
both leaders, without these revivals this 
Republic must have gone the way of the 
French Revolution, as it perilously escaped 
doing. 

PASTOR 

Preceding the day of Edwards there were 
long pastorates. His was shorter by forty 
years than that of his father at East Wind- 
sor; shorter than that of his grandfather, 
with whom he was associated, by thirty-six 



Jonathan Edwards 71 

years. The pulpit then was the throne of 
intellectual power. True, there was peril 
lest it stamp a congregation with fixedness 
of type so as to prevent the enterprise of its 
lay membership. 

That New England minister who wanted 
to be buried with his feet westward, so 
that in the resurrection morning he might 
face his congregation as they arose facing 
the east, illustrates the faithfulness of many 
a man settled for life in those days. 

There is all too much restlessness now in 
the relation of pulpit and pew, both in itin- 
erating Churches and those with a settled 
pastorate. 

Edwards exerted his pastoral function 
largely by way of his study. He might not 
have been the great thinker, author, or 
preacher that he was had he plodded around 
as do so many moderns. Much so-called 
pastoral visiting is but a concession to per- 
sonal vanity, the compliment of attention, 
while the pastoral watch-care might be un- 
welcome. It is but the nursing and rearing 
of a babyish Church membership ; the time 



J2 Jonathan Edwards 

being often wasted in trivial gossip, even 
to discussing the peculiarities or foibles of 
a predecessor. 

Ministers there are, remembered on ac- 
count of jocularity and good stories. Tom 
Corwin, that wizard of stump oratory, 
lamented at the last that he would be re- 
membered chiefly as a man who made the 
people laugh. Are there not clergymen pre- 
paring for that lament? Others who will 
be remembered by achievements at the din- 
ner table. Some whose talent consisted 
mainly in hand-shaking; some as handy 
with a rifle and fishing-rod or as good 
roadsters. 

To ministers with these lower accomplish- 
ments men sometimes turn, though they 
often hinder. Paul exhorts us to covet 
earnestly the best gifts. 

By a judicious use of his study, Edwards 
discovered the direct avenue to the heart 
of his visitors, while he found time for 
other work. Happy that minister who is 
able to make his study the most attractive 
place of all besides the church itself. 



Jonathan Edwards 73 

The need of this may be seen by the 
position we have reached in this century. 

Long ago society was under the dominion 
of Caesarism. That was followed by the 
control of knighthood. Then came the age 
of militarism. After that the papal domin- 
ion. Then in this land for a century Puri- 
tanism was in control. The pastor was chief 
in religious, intellectual, and civic life. 
Then the press arose as a competitor for 
the power of control. Now commerce is in 
the saddle. It is the ally and patron of 
science, and the helper of religion in its 
world-wide work, but there is a conflict as 
to which shall dominate, mammon or Christ. 

If the rising tide of immorality in the 
first half of the eighteenth century needed 
the sturdy strength of an Edwards, the 
mammonism of our twentieth century needs 
ten thousand of them to save the world. 

PENTECOST 

Pentecost or perish. The Church of New 
England was invaded by hair-splitting and 
often head-splitting. Edwards mentions 



74 Jonathan Edwards 

"the devious ways of the young, in spite of 
ministers and magistrates, night walking, 
impure language, and lewd songs." "Habits 
of drinking, tavern-haunting, profanity, and 
extravagance/' Here came the "Great 
Awakening" in 1734-35. He says: "Who 
would have thought that in so little time so 
great a change would have come?" He 
speaks of "seriousness, attention to duty, a 
powerful invisible influence, the reform of 
notoriously vicious persons. The wealthy, 
fashionable, gay, great beaux and fine ladies 
relinquishing their vanities, reading books 
of piety ; religious observance of the Lord's- 
day, confession of faults, reconciliations, 
and restitution — more done in two years 
than in thirty before." This was answered 
by the Wesleyan revival soon after. Such 
tidal waves have marked the history of the 
Church and saved her life. 

Seasons when men in the university, in 
the slums, and in the forest alike have cried 
out, "Sirs, what must we do to be saved?" 
These only have been able to arrest atheistic, 
scientific, and philosophic Godlessness, for- 



Jonathan Edwards 75 

tified by mammonism and the lusts of the 
world, the flesh, and the devil. Thousands 
of Church people "neither fear God nor re- 
gard man." Swift tides bear the Church 
onto the rocks. Over against these there 
are certain tendencies prophetic of another 
Pentecost. 

There is greater Church co-operation, a 
deepening conviction of the need of Divine 
help, a breaking away from old usages, all 
looking toward a world-wide revival. 

Many men occupying the highest outlooks 
from Zion's walls are convinced that it is 
approaching, and not far off. 

As always before, it will have its sur- 
prises, breaking forth in strange places and 
with phenomena such as men could not fore- 
cast. They will exclaim, "We never saw 
it on this wise." "The first shall be last, 
and the last first." It behooves all the 
Churches, and especially any who may be 
self-confident, to be on the watch lest our 
Lord have cause again to lament, "If thou 
hadst known the things that belong to thy 
peace, but now they are hid from thine 



y6 Jonathan Edwards 

eyes/' "Who shall abide the day of his 
coming? He is like a refiner's fire." "Ye 
have robbed God. Bring all the tithes. I 
will pour you out a blessing that there shall 
not be room enough." "Your sons and your 
daughters shall prophesy, young men shall 
see visions, and your old men dream dreams. 
I will pour out my Spirit." 

THE HALL OF FAME 

Yonder on the Hudson at New York Uni- 
versity, along with twenty-nine others, there 
is a tablet to Edwards in the Hall of Fame. 
They were put there by the suffrages of 
ninety-seven votes out of the one hundred 
suffragists. Edwards received eighty-one 
votes, placing him twelfth in the list. Here 
are a few reasons given the author for plac- 
ing him there. 

"Very eminent as a theologian and meta- 
physician. Most of his opinions and doc- 
trines are no longer received as true." How 
considerate to tell us so! 

Another: "I regard him as the most 



Jonathan Edwards yy 

eminent metaphysician America has pro- 
duced." 

Another : "The greatest religious thinker, 
metaphysician, and logician the country has 
produced." 

Had he been measured by intuitional 
power, logical acumen, lofty imagination, 
saintliness of nature, as well as services to 
mankind, would he not have stood above 
the entire twenty-nine and have received 
one hundred votes? 

The likeness on that tablet is perhaps the 
best extant, but how expressionless and 
masklike, after the study of his superb 
gifts. So the face of Washington has little 
in it to interest young America. The like- 
ness of Webster appears gloomy as if al- 
ready overshadowed by the coming disrup- 
tion of the Republic. Indeed, they are for 
the most part a gloomy lot of faces pre- 
sented in that Hall of Fame, but Edwards 
looks the most owlish of them all. 

Here is a task for the artist. There is also 
another for the novelist. While there is 



78 Jonathan Edwards 

copious bibliography, no one competent has 
yet been found to put Edwards and his 
times into romance. But let us hope. These 
are the times for the psychological novel. 
There are living writers, especially women, 
who excel in such writing. 

Xo one seems to have had the call to this 
task for Edwards and his times. Two 
qualities are necessary to its achievement. 
One is emancipation from the fatalism in 
which the great soul of Edwards floundered. 
For a long time this dwelt in the realm of 
theology. It has moved out, at this late 
day, into materialistic science, falsely so 
called, but distinctly into fiction. Fatalism 
in fiction is widely prevalent. The heroes 
of many of the greatest living novel writers 
are bound hand and foot and set adrift on 
the tide of fate with no eye to pity and no 
arm to save. 

The other great qualification would be 
acquaintance with the lofty spiritual realm 
where Edwards mostly dwelt. This re- 
quires one of kindred spirit in order to 
approach and report. The author of such 



Jonathan Edwards 79 

a story must be able to climb Tabor tops 
and visit Patmos isles. With that region 
of life, that other world, Edwards was fa- 
miliar and it was becoming more and more 
his dwelling-place. 

It has been prophesied in literary circles 
that the golden era of literature is in the near 
future, but that is only possible when it can 
accomplish the task presented by the era 
lying between 1703 and 1758, including 
this greatest American of that time. 

RESTITUTION 

" The mills of God grind slowly, 
But they grind exceeding small ; 
Though with patience he stands waiting, 
With exactness grinds he all." 

During the banishment of the family, a 
pathetic trifle may illustrate how reduced 
were the revenues of the household. In 
writing his great works, Edwards often used 
for stationery backs of letters, scraps of 
notes from the congregation, strips from the 
margin of a newspaper, scraps in the form 



80 Jonathan Edwards 

of a half-moon intermingled with patterns 
of caps and other housewifery. 

But he seemed never to have weakened, 
repined, or lost his sense of personal dignity. 
A member of his Northampton Church, Ma- 
jor Hawley, conspicuous name in Connecti- 
cut, wrote an apology for the manner of 
Edwards's treatment, deeply bewailing his 
part in it, and was willing for its publica- 
tion, so far recanting the wrong done. Ed- 
wards assured him of forgiveness without 
condoning the evil done. He may well have 
quoted, 

" The toad beneath the harrow knows 
Exactly where each tooth point goes ; 
The butterfly upon the road 
Preaches contentment to that toad." 

It reminds us of how Florence looks back 
upon the burning of Savonarola, unveiling 
a tablet on the spot of her crime five cen- 
turies afterwards. 

In Oxford Common, on a tall monument, 
one reads the names of Cranmer, Ridley, 
and Latimer. This world has been wont 
to crucify its saviors. 



Jonathan Edwards 81 

Paul in prison at Caesarea sent out many 
of his mightiest epistles, as Bunyan in Bed- 
ford Jail started not only one pilgrim, but 
millions on their way to Paradise. 

The most noted work, at least, of Ed- 
wards was sent out from Stockbridge. Of 
this work, Dugald Stewart, moral philoso- 
pher of Edinburgh University, author, lec- 
turer, and massive Scotchman, said, "The ar- 
gument on the freedom of the will had not 
been and could not be answered." That was 
forty years or more after the death of Ed- 
wards. Fortunately the prophecy has failed. 

The keen, clear, intellectual Dr. Whedon, 
in his work on the will, has answerd Ed- 
wards overwhelmingly. 

Bledsoe, in his small book, "Theodicy," 
cut across the river of Edwards's fatalism 
like a clear mountain torrent and completely 
broke its force. Professor William G. Wil- 
liams, that genius for Greek scholarship, 
while not formally replying to Edwards's 
argument, has plowed up the ground under 
it completely in his work on the Epistle to 
the Romans. 
6 



82 Jonathan Edwards 

In his masterly treatise on "Divine Fore- 
knowledge/' and its sequel, "Divine Nes- 
cience/' the fatalism of Edwards has been 
again overthrown by the enthusiastic, 
scholarly, clear-headed, saintly man, Lo- 
renzo Dow McCabe. 

The late General Assembly of the great 
Presbyterian Church which Edwards served 
for eight months in New York, to which 
he had been especially called to defend Cal- 
vinism, that Church has, by its argument, 
attitude, and utterances, overthrown Ed- 
wardean Calvinism. 

REACTION 

This was, in the nature of things, inev- 
itable. There were great excesses in con- 
nection with the Edwardean revivals. These 
he discussed philosophically, discriminat- 
ingly, and not without sympathy, just as did 
his great fellow-revivalist, John Wesley. 
The excitements were violent ; in many cases 
unsettling reason and leading to suicide, that 
developed into a semi-contagious madness. 
It was from this, in large measure, the Uni- 



Jonathan Edwards 83 

tarian reaction sprang up, more even than 
from Trinitarian doctrines. In fact, the 
Christ of Channing is a far more Divine 
being than is the Jesus of some orthodox 
pulpits. 

A party came into existence of whom it 
is written: "They avoided all solicitation 
concerning their own spiritual condition or 
that of others. They were repugnant to the 
revival spirit. Must have a system of doc- 
trine which could contain nothing to alarm 
their fears or disturb repose. The necessity 
of atonement, special influences of the Holy 
Spirit, were all thought to be alarming doc- 
trines. Men were suffered to forget that the 
Son of God and the Spirit have anything to 
do with man's salvation." 

This devitalized religion, attempting to 
preach an ethical gospel, has reaped a har- 
vest of inefficiency which Channing him- 
self lived to deplore, and from which Bron- 
son Alcott, at the last, broke. A letter was 
published as written by him after an inter- 
view with Joseph Cook, which we have 
never seen contradicted. He says, "I fol- 



84 Jonathan Edwards 

lowed Channing off into Unitarianism, but 
never found one crumb of comfort in all that 
cloudland." 

There have been reactionary tendencies 
within New England theology itself. Ed- 
wards was self-contradictory in attempting 
to reconcile human responsibility with elec- 1 
tion. His gifted son Jonathan, Drs. Hop- 
kins, Bellamy, Emmons, Dwight, Taylor, 
and Park have been modifying that hard 
system of doctrine until New England 
theology began, within the last half-century, 
to limp badly. 

In the eighteenth century the Methodists 
fought Calvinism openly and powerfully. 
It was a large staple of their preaching, 
very sharp, often bitter, but its design was 
to break the intolerable yoke of fate and 
set the people free for faith. 

These were excluded and ostracised as 
far as possible from New England. White- 
field had been the welcome co-laborer of 
Edwards, he being a Calvinist. Finally, in 
1790, Jesse Lee appeared on Boston Com- 



Jonathan Edwards 85 

mon where he preached to three thousand 
people. By that time Edwards had been 
in heaven over thirty years. The discus- 
sions all through the country ran to excess, 
sometimes degenerated into acrimonious 
debate and ridicule. , 

This may be illustrated by a quotation 
attributed to Lorenzo Dow, who became a 
free lance from the year 1798 on. 

He itinerated on both sides of the Atlan- 
tic. His name was cherished as a namesake 
for many a boy among the better Methodist 
families. His rhyme, if he composed it, ran 
thus: 

" You can and you can't 
You will and you won't ; 
You shall and you shan't ; 
You '11 be damned if you do, 
And be damned if you do n't." 

The mellowing of New England theology 
further took place from within. Horace 
Bushnell may illustrate the change better 
than any other. He was born about one 
hundred years after Edwards died. He ex- 



86 Jonathan Edwards 

erted his influence more by intuitional talent 
and broad catholicity of spirit than by ar- 
gument. 

He was heir to both Arminianism and 
Calvinism. The faith of his boyhood was 
largely formed by the influence and instruc- 
tion of his grandmother. His academic life 
surrounded him with the influences of fatal- 
istic Calvinism. He began reading omniv- 
orously and, as he confesses without intend- 
ing it, read himself away from all religious 
faith. In this condition he became a tutor 
at Yale College. 

Happily at that time came one of those 
great religious revivals for which that insti- 
tution of learning has occasionally been 
noted. Bushnell felt, as such noble natures 
do, the embarrassment of standing as an 
obstruction between the young men over 
whom he had special charge and the forces 
of the revival. His own example distressed 
him. Alone in his room his self-catechism 
began; frank, honest, and decisive. 

"Is there anvthing I do believe? No, I 



Jonathan Edwards 87 

can not say there is. Yes, there is one thing 
of which I am sure ; I believe there is a dif- 
ference between right and wrong. If there 
is a God he must be found on the side of 
right. Have I committed myself to the 
right? Not as men call right, but as right 
is in truth. No, I have not. Here then will 
I begin and cast my life out on that side." 

He was at once on his knees in prayer, 
and as he said, "It was a very dark prayer 
for honesty's sake. I had not risen from ray 
knees until I was sure there is a God." 

In later life he compared his apprehen- 
sion of God to the intervention of a dozen 
ensphering walls. "One by one they are 
being removed till now I can almost hear 
God just outside." 

At the age of seventy-four, Bushnell en- 
tered into the wider liberty of the great be- 
yond, while in this world, people of all forms 
of Christian faith have been glad to ac- 
knowledge his inspiring influence as he led 
away into light, life, and liberty. 



88 Jonathan Edwards 

SELF-DENIAL 

Elation at being called from his eight 
years' banishment to the presidency of Nas- 
sau Hall, now Princeton University, would 
have been justifiable in Edwards. With him 
it was not so. In adversity the grandeur 
of his nature only rose to meet the storm. 
In prosperity he was self-distrustful and 
given to exaggerated self-depreciation. 

In his reply to the invitation of the trus- 
tees, he said: "My constitution is an un- 
happy one. I am troubled by a low tide of 
spirits often occasioning a kind of childish 
weakness and contemptibleness of speech 
and behavior, with disagreeable dullness, 
much unfitting me for conversation, but 
more especially for the government of a 
college." 

He admits deficiency in some branches of 
learning, as in higher mathematics and 
in Greek classics, nor would he willingly 
spend his time in teaching languages, unless 
it be Hebrew. 

A Church council decided to approve the 



Jonathan Edwards 89 

action of the trustees and favored his going, 
which so contravened his views of his fitness 
and his lingering fondness for his studies 
and literary work that he broke into tears. 

In this diffidence and self-depreciation 
there is a striking resemblance between him 
and George Washington, who never ac- 
cepted a place of responsibility willingly. 

Do we imagine him unfit by temperament 
or talent for the college presidency ? It may 
be that he had overdrawn his vitality by 
intense thought and too much physical re- 
tirement. 

A college president must be four men in 
one. It requires a full man to deal with a 
body of students. Another one to direct 
a Faculty of learned men. A third to deal 
with trustees, often the hardest problem of 
all, and a fourth to influence the patrons. 
Then a fifth must be added to control the 
finances of most institutions of learning. 

The position was less complicated when 
Princeton was yet called Nassau Hall. 

Edwards was a fine teacher. While at 
Yale he was called a "pillar tutor." Dr. 



90 Jonathan Edwards 

Stiles said he was "the glory of the college." 
Had he lived he would have doubtless de- 
veloped into that order of college presidents 
to which belonged Wilbur Fisk, Edward 
Thomson, and Mark Hopkins. May their 
kind not perish from the land ! 

In these more commercial times, college 
presidents are often required to be solicitors 
general and student drummer. 

There are still a few who are great schol- 
ars and eminent educators, as well as finan- 
ciers. The wonder is how they can be both. 
As things are they must become a diminish- 
ing race. 

SMALL-POX 

It seems a shocking thing that such as 
Edwards should die of inoculation for small- 
pox. Vaccination is humiliating enough, 
but that was when physicians would bleed 
for many a disease, and even soldiers 
wounded in battle were so treated; when 
men were cured by rubbing diseased mem- 
bers of the body with a "thunderbolt found 
at the root of trees struck by lightning." 



Jonathan Edwards 91 

The head of St. Paul was cut off with 
an ax or cutlass, and tradition says Peter 
was crucified with his head downward. 
There seems no humiliation possible since 
the Savior of the world was crucified. 

The disappointing feature of his death 
is that it seems to be premature. His sun 
went down at high noon, just at the gate- 
way of a new and greater career; when 
ready to add to his fourteen hundred natural 
descendants, collegiate children by the ten 
thousand, and when he was personally 
emerging from the gloomy shadows of his 
thought world and religious faith into the 
sunshine of the glorious gospel by way of 
his studies and teachings concerning the 
Trinity, the Son of God, and the mission of 
the Holy Spirit. 

Whether his departure was certainly pre- 
mature we can only surmise. It is a part 
of the astounding mystery of Divine Prov- 
idence which permits this world to be de- 
prived of so many lives after great prepara- 
tion on the verge of their apparent useful- 
ness or in the midst of their achievements. 



92 Jonathan Edwards 

Other great lights have gone out soon as 
set on high. Kirke White's singing ended 
in youth; Mozart died at thirty-five; Ra- 
phael at thirty-seven; Addison at forty- 
seven; Dante at fifty-six; Shakespeare at 
fifty-two ; Macaulay at fifty-nine ; Alexan- 
der Hamilton at forty-seven ; Lincoln at 
fifty-six; Dickens, Spurgeon, and Phillips 
Brooks at fifty-eight; Jonathan Edwards at 
fifty-five. 

THE COMING EDWARDS 

Before he died, he contemplated writing 
a history of redemption, and his trend was 
steadily away from fatalism to freedom, 
from law to grace. As has been the case 
with many another dogmatic writer, he grew 
more tender, showing that the path of the 
just shineth more and more unto the per- 
fect day. 

The hard, dreary work of speculative the- 
ology is mostly past. That may have been 
profitable somewhat, as was the glacial 
period of the earth's surface. It was cold, 
cruel work, but is forever past, and to us 



Jonathan Edwards 93 

is left the smooth plains and fertile valleys. 
Edwards was the greatest glacier of his 
times. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

This is ample and awaits some masterly 
editor to bring out the real Edwards. 
Among his essays are such as "Distinguish- 
ing Marks or Phenomena of the Revival/' 
"Thoughts on the Revival," "The Religious 
Affections/' "On Virtue," "Original Sin" 
(very able and learned, but proving in the 
last analysis that God was the intentional 
author of sin). 

Most of his published discourses were 
along the line of grace, and show him in a 
much kindlier light than such as have made 
him most known. Perhaps his greatest in- 
tellectual achievement, arresting most at- 
tention and challenging most debate, was 
his work on "The Freedom of the Will." 

Many distinguished authors have written 
him up in part — historians like Bancroft 
and Fisher ; preachers and philosophers such 
as Chalmers and Channing; authors like 
Porter, Hodge, and Allen; writers such as 



94 Jonathan Edwards 

Jonathan Edwards, Jr., Dr. Dwight, Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, and Calvin E. Stowe; 
essayists like Parton, Winship, and Trum- 
bull. 

Gossart came from Scotland more than 
one hundred years after Edwards died to 
bring to light the unpublished writings of 
Edwards on the Trinity, grace, and love. 

Bushnell called for the discourse on the 
Trinity, but without avail. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes made a plea for its appearance. 
Dr. Stowe mentioned it as among the manu- 
scripts of Edwards. 

The mention of these writings, known and 
unpublished, indicate the resources from 
which to portray the real and greater Ed- 
wards. 

Froude compelled the modern world to 
look upon Julius Caesar in a new light, far 
less hateful and cruel than men had regarded 
him. A like work is being accomplished 
by the series of American statesmen who 
can be better understood because of the dis- 
tance in time and the impartiality with which 
they are portrayed. 



Jonathan Edwards 95 

When shall the biographer of Jonathan 
Edwards appear, adequate to the portrayal 
of his character ? Already we are prepared 
to bid Edwards the disputant, the severe 
and subtle, the advocate of fatalism, farewell 
finally and forever; while we hail the man, 
loftier as time passes, worthy to be ranked 
with saints and martyrs, and to be forever 
associated with Him from whose presence 
the shadows flee away forever. 

It is discouraging for ordinary mortals 
to look up to such as he and feel the contrast 
of their own littleness. 

So would it be true of the laurel, the pine, 
and the manzanita in contrast with the 
Sequoia of the Sierras, with its mighty 
girth, and its head bathed in the upper blue, 
the growth of three thousand years. They 
seem so dwarfed. But on the mountain- 
height where the giant stands, and under 
the same heavens where he bathes his head 
drinking in the sunbeams, there also God's 
little ones dwell, reminding us of the Lord's 
care of "the least of these my brethren. " 



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